Welsh poppies and lady ferns...

...both self-sowing and lovely together. You really don't have to plant anything or design anything around here...if you like a waving palette of poppies, bluebells, fern-fronds etc. etc.

'Tis the time of year to submerge in plant energy and come up only when necessary. Magic.

I've just started up on facebook. 100 computer years later. That's how I roll. Whoops, cd's over, gotta switch it.

Island-time garden design...

Here are some design ideas from Keats Island this past long weekend...(two weeks ago already?)

While I am mildly confused by the rock, I was pleasantly surprised to discover at least one other stump-chair-maker in B.C. (my dad is one).

It takes a certain presence of mind, whilst chain-sawing down a large evergreen tree, to think, "Well, while I'm here, I may as well make a chair."

This person took it to another level, with arm-rests, and a mysterious planting in the seat. That also confuses me a little bit. But still, let's hear it for stump-chairs.

This next item cannot be easily duplicated, due to the time lapse required for the child's bicycle to assume a nostalgic patina whilst hanging in yon olde apple tree. A classic bicycle-garden moment.

This little Full Moon maple (Acer shirasawanum 'Aurea') claims the semi-shade by the kitchen window--a delicate tree amidst the rugged island woods.

So ya--gardener's holiday with the girls--we mowed the grass, and that's about it...

Fern Fables: Sword and Maidenhair

Our storybook sword-ferns are waking up in woodland-gardens on the north shore (here, bordering the steps to Daphne's grotto garden). Whoever still thinks that ferns are unassuming creatures trembling in dark corners has never looked a sword fern in the fiddlehead(s).

Sword ferns/Polystichum munitum can perch on precipices, border bedrock...

... or sink into the mellow dappled light of an understorey--and clearly draw a circle of personal space with their arching fronds.

Mine. All mine.

Maidenhair ferns/Adiantum pedatum are not as stalwart, but they are obviously happy in the pics below--basking in evening light, but shaded during the day, with an overstorey of rhododendrons and mature evergreens. These may be, in fact, the happiest maidenhairs I've ever seen (in Jim & Rojeanne's garden).

An illumination of unfurling fern fronds...

...

Something storybook about ferns...

Sunshine therapy

Such a beautiful day, I had to post my pics right away, lest the "rainy day blues" taint my blog for too long! I think many many people were finding excuses to be outside basking today. Sunshine therapy, so good.

Here's Leopard's Bane/Doronicum orientale--a little stunted this year with the cold, but still high enough to crest the Hosta 'Krossa Regal.'

Doronicum is the earliest yellow daisy and prefers light shade--it leaps out in spring then goes dormant soon after blooming. Apparently, it also discourages leopards, which can be convenient.

Seems like English bluebells are in a lot of shots these days. Kind of like those blokes that jump into other people's pictures...

An evening view, below, of all things green and growing in Jim & Rojeanne's Old Apple Tree garden. [Check out the circle of sky, mirroring the pathway. I did not plan that. O, the wonders of photography.]

One of the green-and-growing things is this patch of rose whips, snipped from the mother rose in Sue and Hugh's garden and sunk in the soil last fall. I set up a quick wigwam so they wouldn't get lost over the winter...and excavated them from amongst the English bluebells (funny that) to see how they're getting along...

And look! They're setting buds already! Now that's a rose.


Here's the old momma rose--pic from last year--a single crimson red with a name that may have disappeared in the halls of time. However, the point being: if you see a rose you love, ask for a whip and stick it in the ground (preferably in fall). Et Voila.

This pic (below) is the Mexican Mock Orange/Choisya ternata, which is almost as perfect as it can get this year. Usually, choisyas suffer somewhat over the winter and die back a bit, but this sea-level garden is a choisya-friendly micro-climate. I have to cut the stair-side back hard right after it blooms or it would engulf the stairs by midsummer. If you prune promptly, the plant will set new growth and an even bloom for the next year.

Bella bella.

Gumboots are Sexy

So shiny.

I was feeling a little blue (couldn't be the constant downpours, drizzle, sheets of rain, mud, green slime, wads of wet gloves in cold puddles at the bottom of saddle-bags, etc. could it??) when I schlepped into a Starbucks in my muddy buddies. The barista filled up my thermos and gave me a lop-sided grin. "On the house!"

"But why?" I gaped. My brain went through exactly this sequence: "Do I look needy?Does my garden gear make me look like a hobo?? Is he even allowed to do that?...Why is he smiling like that?..."

I'm so going to write a rainy day blues song about baristas.